Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: perfect game

Comparing two very different games–and the end of things, part two

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I finished Promise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Game Works) today–and 100%ed it. By the end of the game, I only had three achievements to get  (not that big of an accomplishment as most achievements had nearly half the players or more accomplishing them), so I decided to get them–naturally. One of them inluded the plane, and, ugh. Just ugh. Oh, I got the item I mentioned in yesterday’s post–the one that I had to fly waaaaaaay up to the top of a building to get. After fucking it up for an hour yesterday (probably more like a half hour, but it felt much longer than that), I had another go at it today. It took me maybe five minutes and seven to ten tries to get it. Which is nothing for me!

I was mistaken in thinking I was at the very end of the game yesterday. I was not, and the game went from being open world exploration to being very much not that. I don’t want to talk to much about that because I don’t want to spoil it, but I will say that I liked the ending in general. I do think it was a bit too sappy for my taste, but at least it was coherent, unlike Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive).

I’ve tried to bite my tongue when it comes to the story of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 because I do not want to yuck other people’s yum. It has meant so much to so many people on an emotional level, and I never want to take that away.

But.

But…

But……

The story is hot trash.

That is my honest-to-god opinion of the story. I thought it started out strong with the prologue, albeit very melodramatic, and then it just steadily went downhill from there. At the end of the first act, I was shocked and gutted by the twist just as everyone else was. But the more I thought about it, the emptier I felt. It was a shocking twist, yes, but it felt very manipulative at the end of the day.

By the way, I included the voice cast reveal trailer yesterday because I was goin to talk about a few notable names, and then I never got past the fact that the voice of Kazuma Kiryu (Yakuza series, Takaya Kuroda) was the voice of Michi, the playable character in this game. I’m going to include the Japanese version of the trailer today, and I’ll finally mention two other names that were specifically released.

One was Swery65, a well-known video game director who has a distinctive bonkers style. The other is Shuhei Yoshida, the fromer president of Sony. Both of them play NPCs whom I really liked, but I don’t want to spoil it here.

Back to the story of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 compared to the story of Promise Mascot Agency–and eveyrthing else in comparison.


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More about my perfect game–and the end of things

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I’m at the end game of Promise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Game Works), and as is true for most games, I play, I’m rushing to get to the end of it. Oh, by the way, this is the post from yesterday. I started Act 3…yesterday? The day before? Something like that, but then I promptly put it on the back burner and tootled around cleaning up all the side quests.

Speaking of which, I am even more a believer in trimming the fat. My god. The amount of side quests/mini-games that are available is mind-boggling. I know it’s that way in the Yakuza series, too, and I found out a fun fact. It’s in the trailer I included in the post yesterday, and I’ll whack it in this post as well.

The main character, Michi, is voiced by Takaya Kuroda, who is the voice of Kazuma Kiryu in the Yakuza series. It’s a testament to Takaya Kuroda that I did not sus that out. Granted, I don’t play the Yakuza games, but I have heard his voice often enough that I could have put it together. Michi and Kazuma are similar men. They’re yakuza, obviously. Both  are honorable men who took a dive for their families. They are bottled up and anxious to do the right thing. They are repressed, diffident and distant, and they are goddamn hot.

I don’t know Kiryu very well, but Michi has wormed his way into my heart. He’s compassionate in that he cares about the people around him, and he wants to do the right thing. In addition, he’s encouraging to his friends and truly wants to help them realize their dreams.

The characters are the best thing about the game. Each mascot has a distinct personality and is memorable. The art work is impeccable in the game, and I love the use of color. Music is appropriate and really adds to the environment. Most of the time, the game looks like an anime/manga in style, but then once in a while, they throw out the chibi version of the characters–who are adorable.

I have my favorites, of course. Of the mascots, I mean. To-Fu is the first mascot I recruited, and he holds a soft (heh) spot in my heart. I just recruited the 20th and last mascot, and he’s adorably charming, too. Even the ones who are creepy, though, are so in a lovably quirky way. I can’t think of a single one that I don’t at least mildly like, and I truly adore most of them.

That said, I don’t love the busy work of sending them out on jobs. I know! That’s ironic given the name of the game, but I have twenty mascots that I have to send out on jobs. I have roughly 80 available jobs now, which is way too many. In the beginning, I would carefully match the mascots to the jobs when I had three mascots and maybe ten jobs available. Now, I just go down to the ones that pay the best (I have them listed from least lucrative to most) and rapidly assign jobs as quickly as possible.

And, because I still have to participate in the grand prix mascot regionals even though I’m number one, that means I have to keep one mascot held back so they are ready to go when need be. I think at some point, this should just be automated. I know the name is Promise Mascot Agency, but it is honestly one of my least-favorite parts of the game.


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The perfect game for me, er date?

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In Friday’s post, I wrote many, many words about how I defined myself and how it applied to dating. It was purportedly about gaming, but I spent most of the post focusing on dating. Now, on a day when I’m supposed to be talking about personal issues, I’m going to focus mostly on gaming. Why? Because it’s funny to me.

In the last post, I left it off by describing how death in Dark Souls made me learn this game back and forth. Let’s take the Undead Burg because it’s the first real place you explore after the Northern Undead Asylum. You’re dropped at the Firelink Shrine by a big black bird, and there are three ways you can go. One, across the way by the skellies in the graveyard. Two, down by the mute Fire Keeper, then down again, to New Londo and the ghosts who don’t take damage (unless a certain condition is met). Three, up the stairs where there are more skellies, but manageable one.

One small gripe. Some people ‘in the community’ say it’s obvious that you’re supposed to go the third route because the other two are so hard. My retort to that the one thing everybody knows about the game is that it’s brutally hard. How the hell are you supposed to discern ‘too hard’ with adequately hard? Especially if you’ve never played that kind of game before.

Anyway, here’s the Undead Burg run. Go up the stairs from Firelink Shrine. There will be a boney to greet you. Then one jumps down as another chucks firebombs at you. There is an armored one further down the way, but I ignore him for now. After dispensing with boney number two, I go up the second set of stairs to take care of another boney, then firebomber, then two more bonies.


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The perfect date for me! Er, game

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I think I’ve established by now that I am a difficult person to please. Not in the general sense, but in terms of what I like and don’t like. I’m horrible to buy presents for (just give me the damn money), and there are maybe three people who nail it every time. When it comes to popular culture, I’m sure I look like a contrarian from the outside. I don’t like much of what other people like. I keep my mouth shut in general because no one wants to hear someone expound on why she hates Star Wars, Senfeld, or Game of Thrones. Or, hell, why I hate movies in general. That’s a half hour rant in and of itself.

I’ve also been pretty open about the fact that I define myself more about what I don’t want/like/need than what I do. One of the biggest positive (or, rather, proactive) decisions I’ve made in my life is to not have children–which is in itself a negative (lack of something). I am NOT married; I do NOT work a 9-to-5 job; I am NOT a church-goer; I do NOT have children. Those are the biggies, obviously.

Then again, there are somethings about myself that are positive descriptions (what I am). I am…ugh. Even there I run into problems because I have qualifiers for many of them. I slap the label bisexual on myself because it’s the closest to what I am, but it’s not a label I truly embrace. I don’t like pansexual or omnisexual, and if I had to choose, I’d just say I was sexual. Not in a ‘no labels’ sort of way, but because like so many things about me, it’s amorphous. Take gender. I don’t think of myself as a woman per se–I mean, I’m not wedded to the term. I don’t think of myself as a man, though, and I don’t identify with nonbinary or gender fluid.

It’s because I’d rather step behind the labels and dissect what they actually represent. I also think about them as a matter of construct and how they don’t necessarily make sense in this day and age. If you think about it, in many situations, there really isn’t any reason to delineate someone by their gender except so we can have a preconceived notion as to how we should view them.

I can hear you asking yourself, “Minna, what does this have to do with video games? In fact, what the hell does it have to do with dating for that matter?” I’m getting there. One of the other things you should know about me by now is that I meander all around a point before actually making it.

More positives about myself: I study taiji. I love taiji weapons. I love cats, especially black. Shadow is my little buddy, and I love him with all my heart. I devour mysteries, and I write them as well. I love writing. I write an estimated 2,00,000 words a year. That’s a lot of words and why my keyboards don’t last very long. Even the external mechanical keyboard I got a month ago or so is already losing some of the lettering. It’s not a big deal because I touch type as long as the keys last, but it was touted to withstand a lot of pressure. I adore it, though. The heavy push as I press the keys, and the clacking sounds (but not actual clicking). It’s just delightful.

via GIPHY

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